FC3 install and grub failure on HP Proliant DL380, kernel issue?

[Sam Hart]

On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 12:26 -0600, Otto Haliburton wrote:
> It failed to read the file type.  I'm confused though you see grub gets
> installed in the installation process and it is there that stage1 is
> written to the MBR.

This is the end of the installation process. Here grub never is written
to the MBR.

>   so when the boot occurs is when stage1 is executed
> to either read stage1.5 or stage2.  I'm not sure what you have here.
> And your exclamation is not clear to me.  I have not ever gotten this
> sort of thing with GRUB, but it maybe an incompatibility with your
> computer.  But I can see where you might have problems having people
> diagnose it because, your explanation and the info supplied doesn't come
> close to anything I have seen with grub.

This occurs during installation. It occurs only on the hardware I
mentioned, namely:
 * HP Proliant DL380
 * HP SmartArray 5i RAID controller card

When you install FC3 on this hardware (or any Linux distro using a
kernel later than 2.6.5) grub fails to be able to read the stage1 file
from the disk when writing it to the MBR. Thus, grub is not installed,
and the system will not boot.

Specifically on FC3, Anaconda does not mention this failure. Instead,
Anaconda finishes its duties and reports that the install was successful
(ejecting the CD, and waiting for the user to select "Reboot").

Now I know this is a bizarre problem. I have gone back and checked and
have discovered that when this stopped working was immediately after
kernel 2.6.5. I am not sure how much clearer I can make it.

> The first question I have is that you seem to be suppling info from a
> grub-install.  Is that true?

Like I said before, this is not grub-install nor any user-typed command.
This is Anaconda. This is during the FC3 installer.

After Anaconda finishes installing the various RPMs on the machine, and
after it finishes setting up various configuration files on the machine,
Anaconda calls grub in batch mode. There, it passes the following to
grub:
  root (hd0,0)
  install /grub/stage1 d (hd0) /grub/stage2 p (hd0,0)/grub/grub.conf

It is here that the failure occurs. After "root (hd0,0)", grub responds
with:
  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type is 0x83

(which tells me that grub can, at least, identify the file system).
After the "install" line, grub responds:
  Error 2: Bad file or directory type

So grub is able to determine the partition type, but it cannot actually
read any files from that partition (here it is failing on "stage1").

> Anyway, Try to give a clearer picture including the command you are
> executing to get the info you are suppling.

As I said in my original post (and in the subject of the message) this
is during the FC3 install itself. I am not executing any command. This
is the FC3 Anaconda install.

I am pretty certain that it is a kernel issue, like I said before. The
reason I am certain is we have a custom FC2 (soon to be FC3) based
distro which needs to run on this hardware. In essence, I have built FC2
installers using all of the updated FC2 kernels, and this problem only
occurs in kernels after 2.6.5. Since FC3 CD install is 2.6.9, FC3 has
the same problem.

BTW, the image I posted (and the above error) is from a stock FC3
install.

I know it's complicated, feel free to message me (criswell on
freenode.net, criswell4069 on Yahoo! and AIM) for more info.

-- 
                                            '''''''''''''''''''''''''
.O.                                         Sam Hart, sam at progeny.com
..O                                        Progeny Linux Systems, Inc
OOO                                         <http://www.progeny.com/>